Have You Ever Been In Love?
by StopBlowingHolesInMyShips
Summary: One shot. HarryxHermione romance. Request. also a portkey challenge.


**"Ever Been In Love?"**

_by Krystallia  
_**One shot. H/Hr. Request.**  
AN: Yeah, I wrote Herm with blue eyes, lol.

I glance over from the end of the table. He is grinning madly, and Hermione is giggling. She looks like such a girl, sitting there in her skirt with her legs crossed, twirling a loose strand of that honey-colored hair I've come to love. The skin around her eyes are creased with joy as those laughing ocean-colored eyes bore into my best mate's own brown ones. Such a pretty girl, such a lanky guy, such a happy couple. I sigh and stare into the mashed potatoes placed in front of me. They look disgusting. I nervously glance back at my friends. They're snogging. Excellent. Just made my day.  
I twiddle the golden fork around in the potatoes. My appetite's just been ruined. Why is it always me? Why do I always find out I'm in love with somebody after they're taken? Why do the people who take them are always the ones that set up the tension with me to be twice as bad? First Cedric when I asked Cho to the Yule Ball, now Ron, my best friend in the world, is dating Hermione when I realize my feelings for her. As I'm stomping out of the Great Hall, growling at Hermione's tongue in Ron's mouth, I can't help but kick her stuff a few feet down. She doesn't notice. Too entranced by her Won-Won.  
_Feelings_. I hate that word. It's a cliche. It always manages to come up when you're falling in love with someone you already know. It usually manages to worm in when you're breaking up with someone. I feel slightly more guilty as I glance over at Luna, who tries to wave at me and catch my attention as I start the long walk up the spiral staircase. Luna Lovegood. My girlfriend. I took up on her offer after Hermione and Ron broke the news to me, just so I wouldn't look like a hopeless arse who couldn't keep a girlfriend for more than two weeks if his life depended on it. So Hermione and Ron have been going sixth months and counting, and Luna and I five. But we really aren't like them. I can't get a grin to even stay for a millisecond on my face when she kisses me. She doesn't care about me like Hermione cares about me, or about Ron obviously. And even though Hermione's kissed me just a few times and on the cheek only, Luna's just aren't the same. I still feel a tingle where Hermione's kissed me for the first time in my life since my parents died, when I think about it. I don't really like Luna like that. I have a fan club full of chasing, squealing fangirls, but I wouldn't pick any of them, either.  
I think I'm going to have to talk about feelings with Luna, so I turn around and go up the spiral steps to the dome where Ravenclaw's common room entrance is hidden beneath a diagram of the stars. I've memorized the ones that you punch to get in. Sirius, the Sun, Sirius, Bellatrix, Sirius, Bellatrix, Sirius. Pain for every time I punch. Kind of like the pain every time Ron's lips meet a part of Hermione. More pain hits me as I shudder and wonder how much of Hermione Ron and his stupid lips have seen. More pain as I think of that compared to what I will ever see. They're so happy. How could they break apart?  
My mind is overridden with hurtful visions of them together in the past and the future as I scan the Ravenclaw common room for the girl with the golden locks and the humongous eyes. And the orange radish earrings. That helps too. I find her in a secluded corner and take her out to where a bunch of telescopes have been set up outside of the hallway. She greets me pretty cheerfully and then her face gets dim and sad.  
"Look...Harry...I know when I first told you I had feelings for you...I didn't quite mean it. It was something of a crush. But I learned to maybe love you...it's just that...it's pretty hard to love somebody when you're pretty sure they don't love you back." She pauses here for dramatic effect. "So my feelings faded as quickly as they came. Harry...I'm really sorry...but I don't feel anything."  
I gape at Luna's out-of-character moment. "Did you just...because I took you here to...break up with you...?" I blabber.  
Luna gave a sad smile. "I knew you didn't. Well, Harry. It's been enjoyable, but there may have been Nargles in our mistletoe." She leans forward and gives me a last kiss. I savor it. I will probably never have a romantic kiss for a very long time.

Hermione and Ron are sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. Really, they're snogging up in the Whomping Willow. I feel guilty as bitter wishes for Ron to get smacked out bubble up to the surface.  
I think for a second, and pick up a stone. They don't see me anyway, so I aim and throw. The rock is ledge in the knot of the Whomping Willow. "Accio Rock!" I whisper. The rock flies into my hands. I quickly toss it into the grass and watch as Ron is thrown into the lake, Hermione screaming. She's hanging by a tree limb. The branch shakes her off and she lands on a soft patch of grass. I exhale. I hadn't realized how worried I'd been about her. Ron, I noticed, was not part of my worry. Before I'd fallen in love, they were equally consuming my mind. Now, Hermione had pushed Ron out.   
"Oh, my God!" sobs Hermione, burying herself in Ron's chest. "Ron, are you okay?"  
"I'm just fine, Hermione," Ron assures her, patting her head.  
Hermione blubbers something senseless and continues with the waterworks. "That tree! The hold is temporary. Never again!" she manages to mutter. Ron holds her head close, his eyes far away.  
It snows very lightly. I pretend to run from a distance. "What's up? I was out with the Firebolt, and I saw the tree go mad!" I ask them, interrupting their tender moment. Ron looks confused. Hermione grabs his arms and blabs about a near-death experience. I try to hide the guilt and act shocked.  
"That's horrible! The tree must have a temporary freeze," I note.  
Hermione nods and sniffles, drawing herself away from Ron. Their hands are laced together. They practically skip back to the castle. I growl angrily and charge ahead of them, letting out my frustration in the running. Whoosh. Hermione's hair flutters, and she stops short, staring at me.  
"Is it just me," she questions Ron as I let out a weird half-roar-of-anger, half-yell-of-excitement escape me, "or has Harry really changed?"

Dinner comes swiftly, and I sit next to Ginny, opposite end of the table from my best friends, the giggling, grinning fools. "Ginny, it's so...I dunno..."  
"Annoying? Frustrating? Hurtful because you know you love her inside?" Ginny suggests.  
I whip around and look at her incredulously. "How do you--"  
"It's gotten quite obvious over the past few months, Mr. Potter! You really like Hermione!" pipes up Wyatt Creevey, a first year who is sitting near by. He likes to ogle at me with Dennis while Colin makes three hundred photo albums' worth of pictures at me at once.  
"But Ron's taken her! He's my best mate, I can't steal her from him like that!" I shout.  
Hermione glances over, her smile showing she's oblivious to my woes.  
"Harry! I know for a fact that after tomorrow, you won't necessarily be stealing her!" cries Ginny.  
"What do you mean?"  
"I mean that Ron is about to break up with Hermione!"  
My jaw drops, and my eyes seem to be popping out of my glasses.  
"Seriously?"  
"He told me last night. He doesn't really like Hermione in that way any more. Harry, the most perfect way to take Hermione is to fix her heartbreak. I mean...look at her. She's going to lose all of that tomorrow evening." We both looked over at Hermione toying with his hair, reaching over the table to play with his curls when he's really just playing with her heart. "Why don't you give her a little back?" Ginny says in a quiet voice.  
I feel terrible. I don't know how to go about doing this. What if I make a mistake? What if Hermione won't love me for this after all?

Today's Saturday. I'm sitting in the common room by myself, on that couch by the fire where me and Hermione sit. There's an armchair off to the side where Ron always sits and faces out. For the past half a year, though, mine and Ron's places have been switched, and the armchair shouldn't even bother being there. I don't want to stare at their affectionate looks and giggles and kisses anymore.  
I'm waiting for her. I know she's coming back from a little time in an unused classroom with Ron, and I know this time her shirt won't come back all wrinkled but instead tear stained. It starts to rain. I move to the window that faces the grounds to observe. A huddled figure in a gray zip-up is running to the tree, curly hair in a ponytail flowing behind her. Snap. Her hair tie broke. I only know one girl in Hogwarts whose hair is so bushy that it makes her hair ties break.  
I pull on a sweatshirt, not bothering to take the hood off my head, and run down the stairs, my heart thundering. Speaking of, the thunder is clapping and banging. Lightning splits the darkening sky, just feet away from the small figure I can see as I burst through the door. She screams and cries harder, dropping to the ground in a subconcious move, clutching the grass. I'm running so fast that the hood gets blown off of my head and I can feel my hair whooshing.  
I run to where the girl is laying on the ground, her eyes closed, her crying soft and hard to hear, her tears running down her face. I gently shake her.  
"Hermione..." I start. She turns so that I can barely see her face.  
"Hermione! Please. Tell me what happened. I hate to see you cry like this, and it's raining and I hate to see you get wet. Come with me. Please?" I plead. I hope I'm sounding soft and caring...I think I am. I don't want to be rough on her.  
Hermione opens her eyes and looks at me, and for a second it's emeralds gazing into sapphires. It's so strange how her eyes are misty and grey and cloud-like some days, sometimes robin's egg blue, and then some other days such a deep, sparkling suede blue. They're holding me down right now, and our faces are hovering inches from each other. She grabs my hand and struggles to get up on her legs. They must feel like jello from the situation. I take her under the tree, just holding her for a second, letting my arms linger. It's a question hanging in the drizzling air--Can I keep holding you?  
Hermione lets go. She must feel awkward. She looks an almost deathly grey.  
"Harry..." she starts, her voice cracking, then she stops abruptly. She sits at the very edge of a lake and lets the tears join the waters of that lake, where other tears have probably been spilt. I lean my head against the tree and wait. The sky is slowly getting darker and the storm is getting worse. We waited for a half-hour, just sitting and breathing, watching and thinking, before Hermione started to talk.  
"He left me."  
"I know," I mutter, a little angry that this conversation is going so slowly. But it feels important, so I don't prod it. Hermione's in deep emotional pain, I think, go as slow as she needs.  
"He said it was a crush, just a little fling, that he needed time but he's not sure if he wants to come back," she squeaked, her eyes filling up and then stopping abruptly. She swallowed, and her eyes weren't watery anymore.  
"Don't fight it," I whisper.  
She promises she won't next time they come. "But...Harry...the most horrible part is that...I spent about three hours in the Three Broomsticks drinking butterbeer after he broke it off and went to be with his friends, and...I realized that--" Hermione was starting to squeal now "--that I never really loved him after all!"  
"But Hermione...then it shouldn't hurt as bad."  
"I know!" Her voice is getting squeakier and more watery, and there are these little breaks in her high-pitched voice where she's fighting against the current of her tears. "But it makes me feel doubtful...What's wrong with me, that a relationship that went that far can't--" she sniffles "--wasn't love? Am I incapable of love, Harry?" She clutches my arm, and although I should be overjoyed, right now my heart is aching with her pain. "Is that the flaw in me? Everyone thinks I'm so perfect all the time, but there has to be some fatal mistake, some miss in my character...is that it? Never to love and..."--sniffle--"...never to be loved?"  
She's getting closer to me. She bows her head in my chest, and I wrap my arms around her small, thin body for reassurance on her part.  
"I really don't think that's true," I murmur, uncomfortable.  
"He--he told me we weren't right for each other, but now I wonder, is anyone right for me? Could anyone ever love me?" she screeches. The tears are in a cone-shaped cup, and it's balancing, precariously tipping. The cup spills.  
"Does anyone love me and will anyone ever?" she screams. My eardrum hurts, but my heart hurts more. It's breaking my heart to see her cry like this. It's cracking amidst her sorrow.  
"Hermione..." I lean a little differently, and she comes and sits pretty much on my lap. She feels small, like a little child, but then she feels different. Her breathing gets a little easier, a little slower, with less sniffles and hiccups of tears. Her breath is a little smoother.   
We sit there, our eyes closed, kind of half sleeping on each other for a little bit, her curled up in my arms. And for a second, I can wallow in how good this feels. Her face, a beautiful face that must've taken God hours to perfect with its simple and yet so complex beauty, tear-stained, her long eyelashes pressed onto her cheeks as the tear glues her eyes shut, and me. Me, Harry. I'm lucky right now.  
"Harry?" she asks, turning around. Her peachy eyelids that match the rest of her skin, save the small sprinkle of freckles, so perfectly open to reveal those beautiful eyes that slip into my dreams.  
"Yes, Mione?" I murmur. I try to save this bittersweet bliss in my mind. I want to stamp it into my brain forever.  
She smiles at the nickname, then it fades. "Have you ever...ever been in love?"  
I'm startled. "Oh...yeah, I suppose. Yes. I have."  
I pause. "Have you...?"  
Hermione stares into my eyes. Hers look hollow and sunken, haunted by love, or lack of. How I know what that is.  
"No," she answers. My hopes are dashed.  
We sit there for a while, her next to me, arms wrapped around her knees. It must be almost ten when she starts again.  
"Unless..." Her voice is kind of choked up. "Can you fall in love over the course of a few hours?"  
I'm stunned. "I think so."  
Hermione's eyes fill up. "Because I think I just did."  
I'm silent. I'm scared to jump to a conclusion and look stupid.  
"You see, there's this guy...he's been my best friend for about seven years, and I used to have a huge crush on him. But I thought I was knocked out of it by our other friend, who I've been dating a while, but it turns out that I think I'm in love..."  
Tears are in her eyes, and I feel choked up myself.  
"And, knowing this guy, I have this suspicion that he likes me in the same way, because he's sweet and he didn't want to hurt our feelings by showing it. But now that romance is over, and I think I might be right about him liking me because he looks like he's crying for joy. But I want him to stop because I really, really think I'm going to burst out into tears and sob into him and ruin his Quidditch hoodie."  
I grab her in my arms. "Go ahead, ruin it. I have two."  
She bursts out into tears and sobs into my chest, nuzzling into my shoulder. She was laughing and crying. "I don't know if I've--" sob "--ever been so happy!"  
She knocks me to the ground. I lean forward a little and our lips meet for that ever-joyous first kiss.  
After a small while we break apart. She gives a small giggle. "Do you know what that tasted like?"  
"Er...pumpkin pie."  
She laughs again. "I know! Where did that come from? The last thing I had was a butterbeer."  
"I had a sugar quill. That's weird. Random taste."  
There was a small pause, and then we both murmured, "But it really did taste like pumpkin pie." We laughed and started racing the rain clouds back to Hogwarts as it drizzled steadily.  
"It's eleven o'clock!" she cried. We raced into the castle, which, despite the time, was busy with hustle and bustle and students.  
We sprinted to Gryffindor Tower and fell onto the couch by the fire laughing. I took her and kissed her again. It felt so good to be allowed to.  
"I love you a lot, Harry," she whispered. Then we looked over at the armchair. Ron was in it, but so was...Luna?  
"Shut up! I sneaked in here!" she hissed. Hermione almost rolled off the couch laughing.  
"Umm, Hermione, I can take a truth potion and I swear I didn't leave you for Luna. It's kind of weird actually...It sounds impossible, but I think I fell in love over a few hours."  
Hermione gave a short laugh. "No hard feelings Ron."  
I looked over at their parting glances. Last kindly look between boyfriend and girlfriend as they split apart.  
"I am positive that my new relationship will last much longer than the old one," I caught Hermione writing in her diary as we sunk into the couch, exhausted. "Actually, I doubt it will end."  
fin


End file.
